Two recent musical events summed up the spirit of the holiday season with messages of love and good cheer. The San Francisco Symphony's "Messiah" and Opera Parallele's "The Little Prince" also provided some much-needed moments of reflection.

As awful as the year was in politics, it was pretty fabulous for TV, no matter what some critics will tell you. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime all added to the joys of cable, and even network had some good offerings.